Wattle wonders

February 03, 2016

A handful of our American Alpines have wattles, those two rather
attractive furred protuberances on her neck. You are familiar with
turkey and chicken wattles, those flaps of skin dangling from their
lower jaws. Several bird species have wattles, and male wattles are
clearly larger than female wattles. Not so in goats. Wattles are more
common in dairy goat breeds than other goat breeds and seem to be
heritable as a dominant trait, so that a mother with wattles is likely
to have kids with wattles. They are usually on the neck, but can show
up elsewhere, such as up by a goat’s ears, and are the same size in
males and females.

What are they for? Delightfully, there’s no good answer. They may have
an association with tonsils, the lymphoid tissue that is a first line
of defense against infection. Goats have six different types of
tonsils. However, goat wattles don’t seem to contain specialized
cells. Show breeders may remove them without harming a kid. Goat
science has explored a connection between having wattles and higher
milk production, but we don’t see this effect on the farm.